“Um!...” said the professor.  “Are you, by chance, a socialist?”

“Far from it.”

“What are your theories?”

“I haven’t any theories.  I want facts, working facts.  There’s no use palavering to the men.  What they want and what I want is something concrete.  I want to know what they want, and how much of it will be good for them.  I want something that will work in dollars and cents, in days’ work, in making life more comfortable for the women and children at home.  If merely paying wages will do it, then I’ll pay the wages. ...”

“It won’t,” said the professor.  “But it ’ll go quite some distance.”

“It isn’t a matter of sentiment with me,” Bonbright said.  “It’s a matter of business, and peace of mind, and all-around efficiency.  I don’t mean efficiency in this plant, but efficiency in living. ...  For the men and their families.”

“It can’t be done by giving them rest rooms with Turkish rugs nor porcelain bathtubs, nor by installing a moving-picture show for them to watch while they eat lunch,” said the professor.  “It can’t be done with money alone.  It would work in isolated cases.  Give some men a sufficient wage and they would correct their ways of living; they would learn to live decently, and they would save for the rainy day and for old age.  I don’t venture an estimate of the proportion. ...  But there would be the fellows whose increased pay meant only that much more to spend.  Mighty little would filter through to improve the conditions of their actual living. ...  In any scheme there will have to be some way of regulating the use of the money they earn—­and that’s paternalism.”

“Can it be made to work?  It’s your honest opinion I’m after.”

“I don’t believe it, but, young man, it will be the most interesting experiment I ever engaged in.  Have you any ideas?”

“My basic idea is to pay them enough so they can live in comfort. ...”

“And then you’ve got to find some machinery to compel them to live in comfort.”

“I’d like to see every employee of this concern the owner of his home.  I’d like to feel that no man’s wife is a drudge.  An astonishingly large number of wives do washing, or work out by the day. ...  And boarders.  The boarder is a problem.”

“You have been thinking,” said the professor.  “Do I understand that you are offering me the chance to work with you on this experiment?”

“Yes.”

“I accept. ...  I never dreamed I’d have a chance to meddle with human lives the way you seem to want to meddle with them. ...”

So they went to work, and day after day, week after week, their plan grew and expanded and embraced unforeseen intricacies.  Bonbright approached it from the practical side always.  The professor came to view him with amazement—­and with respect.

“I’m sticking my finger into the lives of twenty thousand human beings!” the professor said to himself many times a day, with the joy of the scientist.  “I’m being first assistant to the world’s greatest meddler.  That young man is headed for a place as one of the world’s leaders, or for a lamp-post and a rope. ...  I wonder which. ...”